


Broken Schedule

by CWMaddy



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Blame them for this, But it doesn't mention every episode, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Coincidences Suck, Dreams, Eddie's thoughts, Eddie-centric, F/M, Goodbye Eddie, I'm Sorry, Is Eddie a martyr now?, Just Canon Divergence, Not too much divergence though, Poor Iris, Self-Blame, Sort of AU, The Flash season finale broke my heart, Third Person Limited, This begins before episode one and continues on through the season, spoilers about almost all episodes after "Out of Time"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-20
Updated: 2015-05-20
Packaged: 2018-03-31 10:09:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3974155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CWMaddy/pseuds/CWMaddy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eddie has a schedule. He wakes, he works, he loves, he laughs, he worries, he sleeps, he dreams. And then he dies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken Schedule

**Author's Note:**

> Eddie! Why'd you have to go! I probably should've written an Eddie Lives fanfiction since I am so upset about his death, but for some reason I wrote this instead. Please, don't die of the feels while reading this. THAT IS A CLEAR FEELS WARNING FOR YOU RIGHT THERE! Oh, and BTW, I was listening to "Lovesick Fool" by The Cab the entire time I was writing this, so I guess you could listen to that while you read this. But I'm sure any tear jerking song will due. Or you don't have to listen to any music at all, that's cool too.

Eddie Thawne's life was simple. He got up in the morning, got ready for work, and did his job. He didn't have time for social affairs, he didn't have time to worry about his personal life. He occasionally went out on dates, and even though they would epically fail, he wouldn't dwell on it. He had a job to do, a life to live. So he continued to go by a schedule. 

Wake up, get ready, work, take a few breaks in between everything, and then sleep. What he couldn't help though, what he couldn't plan or schedule, was dreaming. Eddie was human, so he occasionally dreamt at night. By the morning he never did remember what they were about, his dreams that is, but he always knew that they were what kept him from breaking down. Without the dreams that Eddie had -as forgettable as they were- they kept Eddie from going crazy wondering if he was a robot due to his lack of emotional connections. His dreams reminded him that he was a human. Just a human. 

But then he met Iris. 

He met Iris on the night of yet another failed attempt at being social, also known as a date. He'd been cancelled on, surprise surprise! He'd been contemplating whether or not to just give up on this difficult feat of not dying alone, questioning himself on why he broke his perfect schedule for this stuff anyway. He just didn't see the point. Eddie couldn't see how he would be able to even fit a social life with real friends and other relationships into his schedule anyway. He went over it in his head even: wake, get ready, work, take breaks, sleep. Was he supposed to spend his breaks hanging out with people; to go on dates with a girlfriend that he didn't have? It didn't make sense to Eddie. Maybe he _was_ a robot. 

But when he met Iris, when they started dating, he realized that his schedule was allowed to be a little broken sometimes. He could wake, get ready, work, take breaks and be with Iris, then sleep. But he could also dream. When he started dating Iris, he started remembering his dreams, and he dreamt much more often. He had dreams about his dates with Iris, about his future with her. He dreamt about proposing, them having a family, them growing old together. Eddie might've been thinking ahead at way too fast of a pace, but he couldn't help it. Iris was the first person in his life that made him realize that schedules weren't always in need of being perfect. 

But then he found out the identity of The Flash. 

When Eddie found out that Barry was The Flash, his schedule shattered completely. He'd been open to letting Iris tweak it a bit, but he was most certainly not okay with Barry and his team shredding it all apart. His simple schedule consisting of working and Iris and dreaming suddenly became much more difficult. Now, he woke, got ready, worked, lied to Iris, helped Barry while on his breaks, and then slept. His dreams about him and Iris being happy together changed drastically into nightmares. Nightmares of Iris being hurt because of all of the secrets he was forced to keep, nightmares about Iris finding out and hating him for it. Eddie blamed himself. He blamed himself for thinking that he could change his schedule for Iris, and not taking under consideration that changing it for her would lead to changing it for everyone else. Eddie had emotions, he was stressed and worried about everything happening so fast. He was human. Eddie wished he was a robot. 

He thought he found a solution, which was proposing to Iris. That way, his nightmares would go back to dreams about the wedding he wanted to have with Iris. He would be happy again, Barry might let him tell Iris the truth, and then his schedule would go back to being just a bit cracked. He could wake up, get ready, go to work, help Barry and still be with Iris, then sleep and dream. Eddie was sure proposing would reinstate his not-so-perfect schedule that he was okay with. 

But then he got kidnapped. 

Wells or, Thawne or whatever, he ruined everything. He told Eddie that he didn't save the day, he didn't get the girl. He said that Eddie wasn't a hero. That was when Eddie realized that his nightmares would either stay nightmares, or turn into dreams that were just that. Dreams. As in, they would never come true. He didn't marry Iris, his schedule was a fluke. Eddie wanted to blame Thawne, he wanted to blame Barry too. But he knew that he could only blame himself. He knew that he shouldn't have dreamt so much, he shouldn't have changed his schedule in the first place. Happiness comes at a price, but Eddie forgot about that when it came to Iris. All he wanted to do while he was around Iris was dream. He wanted to dream about her, about them being happy together. Eddie knew he shouldn't still want that, especially not after Thawne showed him the news article. 

So, he broke up with Iris. Cut his losses; went back to his anti-social schedule that he went by before he met her. His unbroken schedule. He woke up, got ready, worked, took a few breaks (Barry didn't need his help very much anymore), and slept. His dreams went back to being forgotten by the time it was morning. It was lonely, and sad, and Eddie never realized how much he hated it until he broke up with Iris. He didn't like being human, but he didn't want to be a robot either. He just wanted to stop being alone. And Eddie blamed himself. 

But then Professor Stein told him what he was. 

Eddie was a coincidence. And there was no science when it came to coincidences. Just like there was no schedule to dreams. Eddie realized that it wasn't himself that he should be blaming. There was no reason that he should hate being human, and there was no reason that he should be alone. Eddie realized who was to blame. Eobard Thawne. He was the reason that Eddie had broken his schedule for Iris, because they started dating when Barry was in a coma. A coma that Barry went into because Thawne made the particle accelerator explode. Thawne was the reason that Eddie found out who The Flash was, which caused his cracked schedule to shatter. Barry needed his help, Barry needed Eddie to join his team fighting against Thawne. 

Eddie was a coincidence. Just like every part of his broken schedule. Meeting Iris was a coincidence, finding out Barry was The Flash was a coincidence. All of these coincidences were caused by Eobard Thawne. Eddie hated coincidences, and he hated Thawne. So he took matters into his own hands. He realized that the bad guy should never win, even if the hero can't beat him. Heroes don't always have to be the ones to beat the villain. Eddie started dreaming about beating Thawne, which was just another coincidence. The dreams kept him from going crazy thinking about "what if I hadn't met Iris?" And "what if Barry hadn't told me who he was?" Eddie didn't want to go crazy thinking about what if, what if, what if....

But he still hated coincidences. 

Eddie decided that coincidences didn't exist. He decided that dreams weren't coincidences, just pieces of his schedule that couldn't be timed. He realized that dreaming had always been on his schedule, he just didn't know when they would occur. They weren't coincidences, they were what kept him sane. Coincidences didn't exist, and he hated them. That got Eddie to realize that hating something non-existent was pointless. And he hated Eobard Thawne. So what if Thawne didn't exist? Then, he wouldn't need to be hated. Hating something non-existent was pointless, like hating coincidences. Hating Eobard Thawne was pointless, because he didn't exist. At least, he wouldn't. Not if Eddie could help it. 

Eddie didn't save the day, and he didn't get the girl. But who said that the bad guy had to win? Eddie's new schedule was wake up, get ready, work, take breaks while thinking about how to defeat Thawne, and dreaming about that very same thing while he slept. Dreams didn't come true, at least not according to the article that Thawne showed him. But Eddie was done thinking about that. He was done thinking about what if, and he was done hating non-existent things. Eddie was going to beat the bad guy, and he still wasn't going to save the day. That was on his schedule, and he followed it.

But then Iris called him her hero. 

Heroes save the day, Eddie realized. He was a hero, despite what Thawne had said. But he didn't have to be a hero in everyones' eyes in order to save the day. Heroes weren't always happy, and happiness didn't last forever. Thawne was wrong. Eddie was _Iris's_ hero, and that was enough. That was all he wanted to be. Eddie's schedule changed one last time. Eddie's schedule changed to wake up, get ready, work, save the day and be a hero, and dream about it in his sleep. A perfect schedule. 

But then he died. 

And for once, Eddie realized that a broken schedule was all he ever needed.


End file.
